


dear fellow traveler

by lilithqueen



Series: up the airy mountain [1]
Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Anal Sex, M/M, Modern AU, lalli is some kind of nature spirit idk, very loosely based on fairytale framework
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-25
Updated: 2016-06-25
Packaged: 2018-07-18 02:24:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7295776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilithqueen/pseuds/lilithqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Modern-ish AU. In which Emil Västerström, a down-on-his-luck chemistry student, saves a lynx from a trap and gets a visitor with that night's full moon. A visitor that seems to want to stick around, no less.</p>
            </blockquote>





	dear fellow traveler

It was a cool, damp fall day, and Emil was pretty sure he was being watched. He tried to put it out of his mind; he was in the middle of a public park, nothing bad was going to happen to him in broad daylight. Still, he half wished he’d brought something sharper than his pocketknife, just in case. _Even better, I should have stayed home and studied for my exam. But it was such a nice day earlier…_

Fallen leaves were still crisp enough to crunch under his boots, and he sighed. Soon, now, he knew he would have to head back to his tiny, miserable little apartment and his boring task of trying to force some knowledge of chemistry into his brain. The thought wasn’t very appealing, but it had to be done if he ever wanted to rise up in the world. _Ugh_ , even thinking that phrase brought him horribly to mind of his parents’ voices urging him to apply himself. They were already disappointed that he’d gone into chemistry instead of law or business; if he dropped out of _that_ as well, he doubted he’d ever be welcome at their home. Moving in with his aunt and uncle and their three energetic children certainly wouldn’t help.  

_One more circuit around the park, and then I’ll head back._

He was passing by a tiny stream when he heard the rustle in the bushes, followed by a snap and an animal scream cut short. He had a split second to think— _no_ —before bolting off the path and into the untamed greenery that lined it.

Twigs snapped underfoot; branches caught at his hair and scratched at his jeans. He snarled and flailed at them—the animal, whatever it was, was still making those horrible pained noises, and he had to _help_. Finally, he broke through into a tiny depression in the woods and stopped.

Somehow, he’d been expecting a dog. What laid before him was definitely not a dog.

An enormous lynx was sprawled awkwardly in the leaf litter, one hind leg caught in a nasty-looking steel-and-wood trap. Blood stained its fur and the dirt under it, but aside from that it looked healthy and _probably_ not rabid. As he drew closer, it hissed and bared its teeth, ears flattening against its skull. Its eyes were a pale and startling shade of blue.

He swallowed hard as he approached, moving as slowly as possible—and trying not to look it in the eye, which he had read somewhere would make cats angry. Those were some very large teeth and claws. “There, there, little guy, don’t attack me, I’m going to try to set you free, okay?” A calm, soothing voice, that was the key. Very carefully, he drew his pocketknife.

The lynx was growling, a steady warning note, but it didn’t move as he knelt by its side. He’d never been this close to a wild animal before; the smell wasn’t as bad as he’d expected. He took a moment to study its leg, wincing as he realized how deep the trap’s teeth had bitten into it. It didn’t look broken, which was a small mercy. When he dared to lay a hand on its flank, he discovered that the fur was very soft; carefully, he stroked it, and its low rumble changed to something almost like a purr.

He took a deep breath. “Hold still now.” Briefly, he entertained thoughts of simply pulling it open, but the sharp edges of the trap would make that a very stupid idea. On closer examination, the two halves of the trap were held in place by a cheap little rivet that could be easily unscrewed; he didn’t have a screwdriver, but if he was lucky, his knife blade would hold up to the task.

He lost track of how long he knelt on the hard ground, eventually shifting to sit flat on it when his knees started to hurt. Cold seeped slowly in past his jacket; he trembled, squeezing his fists together when the shaking made it hard to hold his knife. The lynx didn’t move, only watching him steadily. After a while, it closed its eyes and laid its head down, breathing slowly enough that for a moment Emil was terrified it would stop altogether—but then the rivet was loose enough that he could wiggle it out, and the lynx shifted. Quickly, Emil unwound his scarf from around his neck and wrapped it around the wound, tying a small knot and praying that it would remain in place. The lynx let him do it, trembling, and then pulled its leg free. It only wobbled a little when it stood up.

They stared at each other. Dully, Emil thought, _This is when it tears my face off._ Without thinking, he held out his free hand.

It took a step forward, then another, and shoved its head roughly against his hand. As he stared dumbly at it, it turned and limped off into the deeper brush.

He sat there and watched it disappear, and then swore as he got to his feet. His pants were covered in dirt and grass stains, and there would be no way to hide them on the way home. _I look like a bum; this is disgraceful._

But even as he trudged through the streets back to his apartment, he knew there was nothing else he could have done. Only a monster would leave an animal suffering like that, and he couldn’t have borne it if he’d walked away.

“Hey, Västerström! Did you fall in a mud puddle?”

Ugh, it was his crotchety landlady on her way out the door of her first-floor apartment. He sighed and nodded. “Yeah, it’s kind of damp and slippery out there.”

Her voice followed him up the stairs. “Well, be careful next time, boy!”

He groaned as he let himself into his living room. The entire apartment was less than half the size of the house he grew up in; his parents had been quietly horrified when they’d seen it until he’d pointed out that _their_ new apartment wasn’t much bigger. His parents had had more luck keeping the place up to their standards, though; paint peeled in the corners of his walls, his bookshelf was a creation of cinder blocks and planks, and he’d dragged his couch in from the side of the road.

It sagged alarmingly in the middle, but it was still sturdy enough to do its job; he threw his jacket on it with a huff and headed for the bathroom, where a hot shower made him feel much better about his existence, if not his life choices. He would do laundry tomorrow, he decided; once he’d dried his hair, he padded back into the living room and picked up his textbook, determined to settle down and study before his dinner of cold pizza or leftover Chinese takeout.

He’d tried to cook once. It had ended badly. Pizza was at least filling; with his belly reasonably full, he tried to make himself comfortable on his secondhand mattress. The lynx’s eyes haunted him when he closed his own. _I swear it understood me. That’s ridiculous; it’s just an animal. But the way it looked at me…_

He drifted off.

The tree branch outside his window creaked as something heavy sat on it, scratching lightly against the glass. His eyes snapped open; it had been cloudy when he’d gone to bed, but now the full moon was out, flooding his bedroom with cold blue light. The form on the tree branch cast a long shadow. Slowly, feeling like his muscles were not quite his own, he got up and went to the window.

A thin young man sat on the branch, wrapped in a cloak made of some shaggy, spotted fur the same color as his silvery hair. His eyes burned bright and blue in his pale face.

Emil stared into them and felt like he was drowning.

The man’s mouth moved, but he couldn’t hear him. There seemed to be an odd disconnection between Emil’s brain and fingers, but he eventually got the window open a crack so he could hear a soft, whispery “Let me in.”

The window stuck as he pulled on it, swearing as the frame bit into his fingers. The man sighed and rolled his eyes, hands joining Emil’s; without apparent effort, he opened the window and climbed in. No, that was wrong—he _flowed_ over the sill, moving as gracefully as a cat, and Emil took a few steps back so he would have room.

He took a breath as the man straightened up. He was taller than him, elegant and fine-boned, and didn’t seem to be wearing anything other than that weird fur cloak and a scrap of some black fabric wrapped around his calf. Carefully, Emil reached up and cupped his cheek, feeling the softness of his skin, and somehow wasn’t surprised at all when the man tilted his head and pressed a kiss to his palm.

“I…” His mouth was dry. Words seemed to have deserted him.

When the man slid a hand up into his hair and kissed him hungrily, he decided they didn’t need any. Logic put up a feeble protest, but it was entirely erased by the heat of his mouth; his teeth were oddly sharp, but they didn’t get in the way nearly as much as he’d half expected they would. Emil slid his hands to his shoulders, pushing his cloak to the floor as he pressed himself up against him.

No, he was _definitely_ not wearing anything under the fur, and when he growled and grabbed at his ass Emil didn’t bother suppressing the urge to wriggle. He was half-hard already; his head swam as the man’s mouth left his to trail nibbling kisses down over his jaw, teeth making their hard edges known. If this was a dream, it was the best one he’d had in years.

Before he could actually buckle to the floor, he wrenched away and jerked his head at the mattress. The man grinned at him and sauntered towards it, settling down in an easy motion as though he owned the place. Emil took a moment to look at him—naked, wiry, propped up on one elbow with the most self-confident smile he’d ever seen—and followed.

The man wasted no time, tangling their legs together and rolling them both over to pin Emil under him and seize his mouth in a ferocious, heated kiss that was over entirely too quickly—but it didn’t really matter, because he seemed determined to leave teeth marks in his throat instead and _damn_ , but that felt good. Emil groaned and arched, rolling his hips; he was fully hard now, and the man’s own erection was pressing against his thigh. “God, _please_ …”

The man smirked, eyes gleaming down at him as his sharp-nailed fingers traced shivery little stinging lines over his chest. Emil made an embarrassingly needy whimper as they continued down his stomach, catching on the waistband of his cheap pajama pants and—

And stopping, as the man gazed into his eyes with a questioning expression. Emil almost snarled, wriggling pointedly and hoping that he took it as the encouragement it was because he wasn’t entirely sure he could actually manage to voice all the things he wanted right now. Well, he had body language at least, and it wasn’t hard to stretch over to where he kept the lube (in a battered Tupperware tub that probably hadn’t been intended to store nine-tenths of his personal supplies, and did you even need lube in a dream, he wondered, but…)

The man made a sound, a little _mrr_ of surprise, as the bottle all but hit him in the face, but as he caught it he _grinned_. It was happy and wicked all at once, and it made Emil shiver.

But then Emil’s pajama pants were going and they were both naked, sliding against each other, and that was good but he wanted _more_ , dug his nails into the back of his neck and got a growl of pleasure as the man shifted to settle between Emil’s thighs and—oh. There was his hand sliding slick and hot between them, and when two slender fingers pressed into his ass he arched off the bed.

The man kissed him, swallowing his rough moan as his hand moved, slowly and carefully; Emil almost lost track of time, conscious only of being stretched and filled, of the sizzling arousal that pulsed up his spine to pool low in his belly. _Fuck me_ , he wanted to say when the man left his mouth to devote hard kisses to his neck and collarbones, but somehow he couldn’t find the words. He shuddered and almost keened when the man flexed his fingers, hitting just the right spot.

Evidently, he got the hint, replacing his fingers with his cock and it was a _really_ good thing Emil had his hands free, because if he hadn’t been able to rake his nails down the man’s back as he filled him so completely he thought he might actually scream. He almost did anyway, making an animal sound between his teeth as the man sank into him.

At least he wasn’t the only one making noise; the man groaned as Emil’s nails scraped down his back, growling low in his throat as he braced himself with one hand on the bed and started to move. He set a fast, rough pace, slamming into him hard. All Emil could do was hang on, rolling his hips into each thrust and gasping when he found an angle that almost turned his brain to jelly. There was no way he’d last, not if the man kept doing that. “Oh, _fuck_ …”

The man sank his teeth into his collarbone, and he came hard all over both their stomachs with a cry that might have been a scream if he could have gotten enough air. With a few more savage thrusts, his partner followed, snarling like a wildcat.

For a while they simply lay together, catching their breath. The blue light in the man’s eyes slowly faded out, leaving them an entirely normal gray; Emil vaguely thought that they should creep him out, but he couldn’t find it in himself to be concerned. A soft kiss, and then the man pulled out, leaving him empty.

Abruptly, he was exhausted; his eyes slid shut of their own accord, and he fell into an entirely normal dream.

In the morning, he woke up alone. He usually woke up alone, but as he blinked at the very empty air next to him, he wondered why he felt as though there should be someone there. And why was he _cold_ …oh, he’d left the window open. Wincing, he got up to close it. His muscles felt sore and overworked, as though he’d been trying to exercise. _Must have been all that kneeling in the dirt yesterday. I’m in worse shape than I thought._

He paused, frowning at the tree outside. Yesterday, its leaves had been brown-edged and crackly; now they were lush and verdant, a spot of summer in the middle of fall. Some of the twigs had broken off, and for a moment he thought he remembered seeing a shape there, a young man in a cloak that had knocked at his window…

After a moment, he blamed it on the pizza. Cold pizza always gave him weird dreams. Once he’d had one about being a soldier in a snow-covered wilderness, and _that_ had been so far out of anything he’d ever experienced that he’d sworn off that particular meal for a week. Compared to that, sex dreams about random blue-eyed men were positively normal.

Days turned into weeks, and he tried to put the dream out of his mind. It was just a dream, after all, and he had a life to live. He got a decent mark on his chemistry test, managed not to blow himself up in any of his lab classes, endured no more than the usual amount of teasing from his classmates about what they termed his “obsession” with fire—really, it was not his fault the flames were so _pretty_ —and even went on a date with the cute red-haired guy that sat in front of him in his Norse Mythology elective. They didn’t really hit it off, but at least he found a great new coffeeshop.

One evening, as the sun set, he decided to go out for a walk. Even if he wound up coming home in the dark, there were plenty of streetlights, and he was pretty sure there was supposed to be a full moon tonight. He felt restless, wired; he needed to stretch his legs.

The weather was turning properly cold now, and he found himself wishing he had a scarf. Except, of course, he’d tied his last one around the leg of a wounded lynx that was probably dead by now if it had stayed in the city and definitely wouldn’t somehow wander across his path again if it hadn’t. He heaved a sigh as he trudged through the leaves, shaking his head to rearrange the hair that had wound up in his face.

Someone was coming up behind him. He paused, listening to the soft footsteps.

And then he turned around.

The silver hair of the young man before him framed a pale face with high cheekbones; his pale gray eyes stared into Emil’s own with an expression he couldn’t even begin to decipher. His clothes looked like something out of a museum—a wool tunic over rough pants and boots that were made of fur, of all things. He was carrying a bundle of the same kind of fur over his shoulder, and the knife strapped to his belt looked well-worn.

Emil stared at him. He _knew_ that face; it floated into his mind’s eye with far too much clarity to just be the memory of a dream. “Um. Can I help you…?”

The man reached into his pocket; Emil tensed until he pulled out a wadded-up ball of black fabric that might, if unfolded, prove to be a scarf. “…My name is Lalli. And this is yours.”

“My…” Slowly, he took it, shaking it out. It _was_ his scarf, cheap and scratchy wool with a thin gold-ish stripe for a border. The color was faded and blotched, as though someone had tried very hard to scrub stains out. “How did you get this?”

The man—Lalli—frowned at him. “You gave it to me.”

“You. You’re…” No. It couldn’t be; that was something out of a fairy tale. Lynxes did not turn into handsome young men and return your scarf to you. “No fucking way. You’re not—the lynx?”

Lalli smiled, slow and pointed, and his eyes burned blue. “You saved my life. The least I can do is repay you.”

At that smile, memories slotted themselves into place in his mind—the open window, the space in his bed, the dream that had not been a dream. He felt heat crawl up his face and wondered if it was possible to catch fire from pure mortification. “ _Um_.” Groping for words, he came up with “Walk with me? I mean—we really, really have to talk about this first, and you don’t even know my name, and I still don’t even know if I can _believe_ you—”

Lalli bent to roll up his pants leg. The fresh scar wrapping around his calf had clearly once been a ragged laceration, only just healed. As he let the fabric fall, he caught Emil’s eye and smirked.

Emil took a breath, because it was that or faint. “So, uh. My name’s Emil, and I really think we should head back to my place. To talk.”

Lalli watched him for a long moment before nodding.

Somehow, as they walked, it only seemed natural to take Lalli’s hand, to let him sweep his fur cloak (which really was _lynx_ fur, and how had he missed that?) over his shoulders when the wind picked up. By the time they got back to Emil’s apartment, he thought maybe this weirdness would work out. If his life had to be like something out of a fairy tale, at least it was a good one.


End file.
